by Clare Bell
* * *
That evening he and Ratha caught more striped shrews and she managed to trap and kill one by herself. By nightfall, she was full and drowsy. She wanted a den where she could sleep. Instead, Bonechewer took her to a moonlit glade beneath the slope where the spring ran and told her to hide amid the ferns.
“We aren’t going to hunt,” he said in response to her grumble that she was stuffed right down to her tail. “Just stay here with me and watch.”
He crouched beside her and they watched as the glade began to stir. Ratha had run trails and herded animals by night, but she had never stopped to notice how the darkness brought so many small creatures out of their dens. Even though Ratha’s hunger was sated, she quivered with excitement and felt Bonechewer’s paw descend on her to keep her from wreaking havoc among the night denizens of the meadow.
Tiny feet pattered back and forth through the underbrush, rustling last season’s brittle leaves. Bonechewer listened and told her what creatures made which sounds. Some of them she knew, from her nights of guarding clan herds. Most, however, she didn’t and had difficulty telling one animal’s noises from those of another. Her ears were tuned to the calls of lost or straying herdbeasts or to the sounds of raiders lying in wait in the brush.
She started when a little blacksnake emerged from its hole almost between her forepaws and slithered away, its scales edged with silver. She watched it crawl through the grass and onto a rock still warm with the day’s heat. As the blacksnake coiled itself with a soft scrape of scales, an animal with dingy gray fur, a pointed nose and a long bare tail ambled by the base of the rock. The blacksnake raised its head, tongue darting and scanned the bare-tail as it went by. The snake sank down again, loosening its coils. Ratha wrinkled her nose at the bare-tail’s rank odor and agreed with the blacksnake that there were better meals to be had. A second bare-tail followed the first, the tail arched over its back. Several gray bundles dangled upside down by their own small tails wrapped around the larger one. The smelly bare-tail, Bonechewer said, often carried her young that way.
Bonechewer didn’t take Ratha back to his den until sunrise and she slept until midday. Again they hunted marsh-shrews, and when both had killed and eaten their fill, he took Ratha to another place where she could hide and watch. They spent several evenings hidden together. Each evening Bonechewer showed her the creatures that made up his hunter’s world. He told her about their lives and habits and drilled her until she knew them. Not until she understood every quirk and characteristic of a prey animal did he let her hunt. She complained bitterly at first, for her instincts told her to pounce.
As she learned more, however, she complained less, for she began to see the wisdom in his method. Once she turned seriously to the task, she became so absorbed that it threatened to distract her from the business of filling her belly. Bonechewer varied things by showing her other hunters who shared his territory. One of Bonechewer’s neighbors was the flightless bird that had attacked her on her first hunt. From afar, she watched it stride across the marshland, the furred carcass of its catch dangling from its hooked beak. That limp pelt could have easily been hers, she thought, shivering. When the great head lifted and the lizard eyes stared her way as if they knew exactly where she was hiding, Ratha broke cover and fled, ending the lesson for that day.
Once Bonechewer took her out of the marsh along the lakeshore and turned inland until they came to a small plateau dotted with trees and wildflowers.
There they saw a huge beast with the body, neck and head of an oversized dappleback. The creature’s forelegs were longer than the rear legs, its back sloping down from shoulders to withers. Shaggy orange fur covered back and belly. Instead of hoofed toes, the feet bore sickle claws that forced the creature to walk with an awkward shuffle. Ratha hid among the flowers and watched the shambleclaw as it reared up to strip tender leaves from the trees or grub for roots with its claws.
It seemed to Ratha, as she followed Bonechewer on hunts and expeditions, that she was seeing every kind of animal there was. How narrow the herder’s life seemed to her now as she began to relish the variety of forms and the variety of flavors. Bonechewer also taught her to fish in the lake and she found that the finny denizens of the water were as varied as creatures on land and sometimes even queerer. He showed her a fish with four eyes, two above and two below the surface of the water. He said it tasted dreadful, but was fun to watch on lazy summer afternoons as it shot down dragonflies with a stream of water and gobbled the drowning insects as they thrashed on the surface.
The only creature they had not seen was another of their own kind. Bonechewer prowled his territory alone except for her and they saw no other Un-Named hunters. To Ratha, accustomed to eating or working alongside many others, this solitary existence seemed strange and unsettling.
They were stalking meadow mice on the hillside below the spring when Ratha asked him why he never saw the other raiders.
“They don’t come here,” he answered, after finishing his kill.
“Why?”
“Why should they? They have their territories and I have mine. They stay on their ground and I stay on mine. I like it that way.”
“If you like hunting alone,” Ratha asked, puzzled, “why did you take me in?”
He grinned at her and she grinned back at the sight of the limp tail still hanging out of his mouth. He swallowed and the tail disappeared. “You’re different,” he said.
“I’m Named, if that’s what you mean,” Ratha answered tartly, not quite sure what she was getting into.
“Ptahh! That silly custom? It means nothing to me.”
“If my name doesn’t make me different, then what does?” Ratha demanded.
“You’ll see, clan cat.” He turned his head sharply and pointed with a paw. “There’s a fat one over there.” Ratha followed his gaze and saw the grass rippling. She wanted an answer to her question more than she wanted another mouse, but she sensed she wouldn’t get it. At least not from him. She put away her annoyance and began to stalk, but she couldn’t help wondering what he meant.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Summer’s golden grass and lazy sun faded into wind and blowing leaves. The rushes beside the shore withered, turning brittle. Their crisp green odor turned dry and nutty. The mornings became cold and drizzly; the afternoons gray. Only once in a while did the sun seep through the clouds hanging above the lake. Everything smelled dank and rotten.
Ratha shed her summer coat and with it the last faint tracings of her spots. Her fur grew back thickly in gold and cream. She was pleased with her new beauty, but, to her dismay, it didn’t last. The autumn rain turned all the trails to mud and she returned from hunting soggy and spattered from nose to tail. Bonechewer also shed his copper fur for a somber brown, which looked black in the rain.
The weather kept small creatures in their burrows. Both Ratha and Bonechewer worked hard to keep their bellies full. There were times when they returned empty to their den and could only lie and listen to each other’s stomachs growl until hunger forced them to hunt again.
Ratha learned to eat lizards and earthworms and to chew on tubers she dug from the ground. She developed a taste for the noxious bare-tails, for they were often the only thing she could catch.
Autumn yielded to winter. The rain fell hard and often turned to sleet. Ratha and Bonechewer hunted by day and spent the bitter nights curled up with each other in a nest of leaves in a hollow pine. It got so cold that the one who slept closer to the entrance would wake shivering, his or her whiskers rimed with frost.
The morning was still and pale as Ratha poked her whiskers out of the den. She was alone, as Bonechewer had risen earlier to forage. She crawled out and shook herself. She felt itchy and irritable. There was a strange fragile feeling in the air, an uneasy lull between last night’s storm and the mass of heavy clouds crawling down the ridge above the lake.
Better hunt now, she thought, knowing that she and Bonechewer would spend most of the short day
huddled together in their den while the new storm lashed the lake to churning froth and flattened the rushes.
She circled the old pine until she picked up Bonechewer’s scent. Soon she saw his tracks and followed them up along the lakeshore.
There she found him, up to his chest in muddy water. He was trying to drag something ashore. As Ratha came closer, she could see that his prize was the drowned carcass of a young deer. She waded in, despite the freezing water, and helped him haul it ashore.
“It hasn’t been dead long,” said Bonechewer, nosing the body. “For carrion, it is fresh. See? The eyes are still firm and clear.”
“A three-horn fawn,” Ratha said, noticing a bony swelling on the animal’s nose that matched the two horn-buds on its head. She placed a paw on the fawn’s ribs and rocked the carcass. It seemed oddly limp and the head rolled on the ground.
“Are you sure it’s fresh?” she asked Bonechewer. “Put your paw on the back. Here, between the shoulders.”
He did. “The back is broken,” he said, cocking his head. “So is the neck. And here are the marks of teeth. This beast didn’t drown. I think this is a kill.”
“Who would throw their kill into the lake?”
Bonechewer twitched his tail. “Someone may have lost it in the storm last night. He may have been dragging it along the ledges that overhang the lake on the far side. We may find the hunter’s body washed up further along the shore.”
Ratha sat down and stared at the carcass. The prickly sensation she had been feeling all morning had soured her temper. “Bonechewer, I haven’t seen any three-horns around the lake, or anywhere else here.”
“I haven’t either,” he answered, shaking his pelt dry. “There aren’t any. I’ve lived here long enough to know.”
“Then where did this one come from?”
He grinned. “Perhaps Meoran sent you a gift.”
“Bonechewer!” Ratha stamped, sending mud up her leg, spattering her chest. Again she stared at the carcass, feeling waves of heat wash over her. She was in no mood for mysteries. She should just eat and be done with it. Something kept her back. This animal had to belong to the clan herds. There was no other place it could have come from, for it was fat and well taken care of, not scrawny and wild.
Bonechewer yawned, “I don’t care where it came from. It’s fresh and both of us could use a good meal.”
“Yarrr,” Ratha agreed, although the sight of the slain clan animal disturbed her more than she would admit. She was sure Bonechewer was teasing, but she sensed truth behind his words, even if it was twisted. She glanced at her companion, who was already tearing at the fawn’s belly. The sound of him eating and the smell of flesh in the damp air made her stomach cramp with hunger. She joined him and ate.
When Ratha thought she couldn’t force another bite down her throat, she felt Bonechewer start and stiffen beside her. She wiped her muzzle on the inside of her foreleg and stared over the barrel of the kill. In a patch of weeds several tail lengths away, sat two intruders, one gray, one spotted. Ratha bristled and started to growl.
“Sss, no!” Bonechewer commanded and her challenge died into a puzzled whimper. She watched as he stepped, stiff-legged, in front of the carcass and faced the two.
These were the Un-Named, Ratha realized, her heart thudding in her chest. One was a half-grown cub and the other an elder, but they looked rough and wild. Their faces were wary, their eyes hunters’ eyes. Their smell, drifting to her through the drizzle, was a scent she had never smelled before. The Un-Named had a strong odor, both sour and musky at once. It was laced with a mixture of prey blood-scents, some old, some fresh. It held the stale scent of age and the smell of mud carried far between weary pawpads. And along with the scents of the Un-Named and the creatures they hunted came the wild scents of unknown valleys, plains and forests where a hunter might roam in freedom or die miserably of starvation.
Ratha stared at the Un-Named Ones and saw that what their smell told her was also written in their eyes. Would such a life allow them to learn anything more than survival ? She had been taught that the clanless ones knew nothing but the urge to fill their bellies. She knew better now. Bonechewer bore no name, yet he spoke as well as any in the clan. But she realized, as she glanced at him and then at the two Un-Named, he was as different from them as he was from those in the clan. She waited, watching Bonechewer. She saw his eyes narrow and his mouth open.
She waited for him to attack or to roar a challenge at the witless ones. He did neither. He spoke to the Un-Named cub as he would have spoken to her. “Do you travel alone with the gray, spotted-coat? Or do more follow?”
The strange cub got up and walked forward. The gray female remained seated, following the cub with eyes that seemed strangely unfocused and diffuse. Ratha thought at first that the gray was blind, but she saw the grizzled head turn and the slitted pupils move as the cub walked past.
She sought the cub’s gaze, thinking she would see the same dull stare. As his eyes met hers, she felt her fur rise. His gaze was as sharp and clear as Bonechewer’s. Yet he was Un-Named. Would he speak?
He waited, holding Ratha’s eyes as if he knew the question burning behind them. Then he turned to Bonechewer. “More follow, dweller-by-the-water. Hunting grows hard. We turn to other ways.”
The sound of his voice sent another shock through Ratha. She let out her breath slowly. She had been as wrong about the Un-Named cub as she had been about Bonechewer. The clan knows nothing about the Un-Named, she thought. Nothing.
The spotted coat spoke again. “There will be many tracks across your ground before this season is done.” The cub’s gaze strayed to the gutted carcass. “Ho, dweller-by-the-water,” he said. “The lake has brought you a good kill.”
“A good kill. Are these the marks of your teeth on its neck, little spotted-coat?” Bonechewer asked.
“No, dweller-by-the-water.”
“Then make your tracks across my ground and leave me alone.”
The cub stepped forward, head lowered, tail stiff. “You have not been long among us if you have forgotten the wanderer’s claim, dweller-by-the-water. The old one and I are far from home ground and we are hungry.”
“I had not forgotten, spotted-coat.” Bonechewer grinned, showing all of his fangs. “I hoped you were too young to know about it. Ah well. Come then, and bring the gray.”
“Bonechewer!” Ratha’s jaw dropped. “Why are you doing this? They have no right to the kill!”
Both the cub and the gray turned green eyes on her. “She speaks for you, dweller-by-the-water?” the cub asked Bonechewer, who had stepped quickly to Ratha’s side.
“Ratha,” Bonechewer hissed in her flattened ear, “if you want yourself in one piece, shut your jaws and let me speak to them.”
“You fear them? A spotted-coat and a gray half your size? They have no right to this kill,” Ratha spat back. “It was taken from clan herds. I’ll fight for it even if you won‘t!”
“The clan? Ptahh! You would fight for them? Meoran would kill you if you returned to them. Fight to fill your own belly, if you must, but speak no more of the clan.”
Ratha’s ears drooped. “If we kept the deer, we wouldn’t have to hunt tomorrow. They are only a spotted coat and a gray.”
“A spotted coat and a gray, yesss, but others follow.” Bonechewer’s whiskers poked Ratha’s cheek. “I don’t want to fight all the Un-Named. Be still, I tell you, and let them eat.” He shoved Ratha aside from the kill, opening the way for the two intruders. Hatred and outrage burned in her, and for a moment her fangs were bared against Bonechewer’s coat.
“You know better than that, clan cat,” he said very softly. “Your belly is full. Let them fill theirs.”
Ratha’s anger settled. She watched as the cub went and nudged the gray. He pointed to the carcass with one outstretched paw. The elder lifted her head, stared at the meat and licked her chops.
“Food,” Ratha heard the cub say. “Come. Eat.” The grizzled one peered past h
im to Ratha and Bonechewer. She whimpered, raised her hackles and showed her teeth, yellowed and worn. “No,” the cub said, pawing her. “No fight. No hurt. Gray one can eat.”
Bonechewer walked off a distance and sat down, his back turned. Ratha, however, stayed close, watching. Something about the gray female repelled yet fascinated her. The cub, slavering, trotted to the carcass and began ripping at the flank. The gray followed him and the two ate until their bellies were swollen.
At last, the two were finished. Ratha noticed, with dismay, that not much remained of the deer except the skull and shanks. The rest was eaten or scattered. The gray-coat coughed, shook off the rain pattering on her fur and swung around. Not knowing quite why she did so, Ratha set herself in front of the gray, blocking the old one’s path.
“Old one, if you eat of our kill,” Ratha said, “you must give us answers in return. Who are you? Where is your home ground? Where do you journey in such bad weather?”
The gray’s answer was a swipe at her face. Ratha ducked.
“Save your words, muddy one,” came the cub’s voice from behind her. Ratha turned to see him licking his whiskers. “The old one can’t speak. She barely understands what I say to her.”
“Why?” Ratha demanded. “Has she lost her wits to age?”
“She never had any. That’s the way she’s always been.” The cub yawned and stretched until his tail quivered.
Ratha backed away from the gray-coat. The rheumy eyes followed her and she felt imprisoned by their dull stare. Her stomach tightened with anger and revulsion. The cub lifted his brows at her.
“I’m sorry for her,” Ratha stammered, wishing she had never come near the gray.
“Why be sorry?” the cub asked. “She doesn’t care. She doesn’t know anything else. She’s a better hunter than most of the others. I like her because she doesn’t talk.”
Ratha opened her mouth again, but couldn’t think of anything to say. Despite her words, she was feeling sorrier for herself than for the gray-coat. Again she had been wrong. The answer had seemed simple and easy to catch between her teeth. Now it wiggled loose like a marsh-shrew and escaped down a hole of contradictions. She felt upset and uncomfortable, as if she had been caught doing something shameful. But all she had done was to ask a few questions. No. It was those eyes that chilled her, those ancient eyes that should have been full of life’s wisdom and instead were empty.